Casting materials

You won't be able to get anything except very crude castings using sand and pouring metal.
Find a used jewelers centrifugal casting outfit. It will fit into a wash tub, and you can do very intricate castings with it.
 
For small, intricate stuff gravity alone won't overcome the surface tension and force the metal into all the nooks and crannies...hence the centrifuge.

~Chip
 
John as someone who worked in an investment foundry for 12 yrs, I have to say that I can't see how this is worth the time and effort.
The lost wax process has it's place, but I don't think guards/fittings is a good fit for this.
A casting would be beneficial if you wanted to put on many parts per tree since each piece is small.
A casting would be beneficial if you were ok with the as-cast surface finishes and you only wanted to machine the slot for a press fit.

you mentioned carving wax, i'm not seeing this as an efficient use of time.

you know how quickly these can be machined up in 2 setups on a CNC mill.
 
Agreed.
I have three casting setups, and have only cast one guard that I can remember. I cast a few fuchi/kashira sets, but prefer to hand make them from sheet stock.
The only advantage of casting a fitting is if it has some feature that can't easily be done by forging/shaping and metal removal. If the fitting had vines and flowers climbing up it, that may be easier to carve in wax and cast. You will still have to finish and polish the casting, so most small detail will still have to be done by hand.
 
H HSC /// I understand. The things I envision I would be trying to do would require 3D geometry and the cutting tools necessary for it. I'm more than capable of the machining, I'm less capable of the modeling. Meaning, I could likely carve it from wax faster than I could 3D model it, those operations being essentially analogous in either process. With a wax pattern, I can see everything proportionally as I carve the wax, one of my biggest shortfalls with modelling/machining is poor proportioning, sometimes what looks right on the screen is way, way off in reality.

Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith I understand your point as well. I anticipate a lot of hand finishing. I guess the reason the idea appealed to me was as I said before, I can carve wax, make a mistake, put wax back, where if I were carving a floral vine on a guard already fit, and make a mistake, I'm either going to have to hide it or start over. The hope being, it's easier to clean up a casting with riffle files/stones/scrapers/whatever without wiping a detail out completely than to carve it from scratch. But maybe I'm wrong and carving something from stock is easier than I'm thinking it will be, or cleaning up a casting is more work than I anticipated.

The biggest advantage I was hoping to realize, casting rather than forging or machining, was to have a wax pattern in my hand that I could manipulate easily, slide on to a blade, gauge proportion, etc, and even if the result was a very rough casting, I would have features guiding any further surface alterations.

Maybe I'm completely off base with some of those assumptions.

At the very least, I want to build a small foundry if only to pour ingots of schibuichi and other alloys. That doesn't seem like a very drastic investment in either time or materials, even if I purchase a crucible rather than make one.
 
Even with the wax in your hand, you have to realize the casting will actually be smaller.
 
How significant is shrinkage in cooling? I mean I was aware of it but didn't really consider how much it would be.
 
Thanks Bill. And everyone. Learned a lot. I think I'll start with ingots, and it won't take much additional cost to do some experiments in sand to see if it's worth the effort, or gauge whether to invest in a centrifuge.
 
And to your earlier question, you use a special casting investment ( cristobalite), not ceramic slip. Depending on the degree if intricacy in the model, there are different formulations and different mixing ratios with water.
 
I have watched a lot of videos on casting, and in only one did the guy heat up a metal form first before pouring in some brass, and it came out fairly smooth. All the ones that used a cold form got a pretty rough surface. I'm curious how repeatable that is.
 
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